Bygone days: Islanders remember the Halifax Explosion

Reginald "Dutch"Thompson's column The Bygone Days brings you the voices of Island seniors, many of whom are now long-departed. Thesetales of the way things used to be offer a fascinating glimpse into the past. Every second weekend CBC P.E.I. will bring you one of Dutch's columns.

Next week will mark 101 years since the Halifax explosion in which more than 2,000 people died. Thousands more were injured and left homeless.

Two ships, the Norwegian steamship Imo and the munitions ship Mont-Blanc, collided on Dec. 6, 1917, igniting the Mont-Blanc's cargo and resulting in a massive explosion.

It was known as the explosion heard around the Maritimes, as people in P.E.I. and New Brunswick heard it. And almost everyone ended up having a connection to it,

'We fell to the ground'

"I was four years old and I thought it was thunder, and I crawled under the couch," said Angus Johnston, who was 96 years old when Thompsonspoke with him. "And it rattled the dishes in our cupboard."

Johnston was originally from White Sands on P.E.I.'s eastern shore, across the Northumberland Strait from Nova Scotia.

"I was at Prince of Wales College then,"recalled Eleanor Lowe. "We were standing down at the south end outside the classroom, myself and some other students, and the ground rippled we fell to the ground, and we said oh, that must have been an earthquake!"

Lowe from Charlottetown was born in 1901, and lived to be 107 years old.

'Tremor in the earth'

The First World War was raging across Europe at the time. In Halifax, people thought the Germans had crossed the Atlantic and invaded Canada.

Halifax was the main port for the supply and ammunition ships to begin their convoys to Britain.

In one interview with Thompson, a man recountedrunning late for schoolon Barrington Street. The building hada view of the harbour, and he ran into the classroom at five minutes past nine and saw his Grade 2 classmates all lined up at the windows looking at the ship on fire in the harbour. The ship exploded and two seconds later the windows blew in on the children, many of whom were blinded by the flying shards of glass.

Before Donald Nicholson of Hartsville, P.E.I.became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian church, he left home at 16 and worked his way around North America in a variety of jobs. He took the harvest train from P.E.I.to thresh wheat out west, cutrailroad ties in northern Ontario, and luggedslabs of stone in a New England granite quarry. He was even a preacher in New York City.

"I remember where I was standing was behind the old home. I thought it was thunder first, you could feel sort of a tremble, tremor in the earth," said Nicholson.

Nicholson also told Thompson about meeting a blind man when he was in New York in 1927. The man was a piano tuner and as Nicholson helped him find an address, the man told him he travelled the streets and subways without ever getting mugged the man had been blinded in the Halifax Explosion.

Prime Minister in P.E.I.

The day of the explosion was a special day on P.E.I. for an entirely different reason.

Helen Herring of Cape Traverse, P.E.I., who was eight years old at the time, saidthe Prime Minister was in town.

"That was the day that Sir Robert Borden was in Borden to name the town and it actually became Borden that day," she told Thompson. "My parents went by sleigh, there was snow. I was at home and another girl with me, we were playing around the yard, and we heard what we thought was a clap of thunder. We looked, we couldn't see a cloud, but we didn't think anything of it."

Herring's parents returned home with the news of theexplosion they'd heard in Borden over wires to the telegraph office that's how news was spread back in 1917.

Charlottetown sent fire truck

Nova Scotia still sends a huge Christmas tree to Boston every year to thank the folks there for the train-load of medical supplies, food and money the city deliveredto their northern neighbour.

Summerside businessman Creelman MacArthur headed over to Halifax as soon as the news came into the railway telegraph office. MacArthur returned with a first-hand account of the destruction.

P.E.I. sent food, blankets and coffins to Halifax. Former Charlottetown fire chief Gordon Stewart told Thompson P.E.I. sent over a fire engine.

"We had a second motor-driven fire engine that we got, came here in 1917, and after the explosion they sent it to Halifax to help in the cleanup after. All it was, was just a truck that carried fire hoses on it and a few other axes and crowbars and stuff like that," Stewart said.

The Stewarts were long-serving firefighters in Charlottetown 147 years in total. Gordon Stewart's grandfather Albert Large was the fire chief, as was Gordon for 22 years. Gordon served for 30 years before that and his brother Lou was a firefighter for 60 years.

'Everything exploded and went to pieces'

Sandy Fraser was born in 1913 on West Street in Halifax's North End.

"I remember being in the kitchen having some breakfast by myself and I was looking out the window," he said. "And while I was eating this thing happened and I didn't know what happened, I couldn't see anything ... but I guess the window exploded, everything exploded and went to pieces."

Fraser was momentarily blinded by the explosion, but he saidhis sight soon returned.

'Thank the good man above'

"I remember going outside the house and looking over toward Robie Street and I remember this horse and wagon, this flat wagon with people on it headed toward the common. I guess they were taken over there for treatments."

"It was a terrible, terrible thing."

Fraser worked at the Nova Scotian Hotel in Halifax on the waterfront, what is now the Westin. In 1938 he came to P.E.I. to work as the night auditor in the new CN Hotel on Kent Street, now known as the Rodd Charlottetown Hotel. Fraser married an Islander and worked his way up to hotel manager.

The Halifax he knew has changed beyond recognition, but Fraser said he'll always remember that fateful day.

"I'm lucky to be still here. And I pray every night.I go to church every Sunday and pray every night, and thank the good man above for leaving me on this earth," said Fraser.

More P.E.I. news